Sugar Beets. 
23 
tion. This improvement is not due to drainage, lor the water table 
has not been lowered and is seldom low enough to prevent 
capillarity from bringing moisture, and consequently salts, to the 
surface. An attempt was made to determine the direction and rate 
of the flow by introducing lithia salts into one of the wells, but it 
was found upon examination that the ground water contained lithia 
at all times. 
The effect of seasonal differences upon the crop was noticed in 
the greater amount of dry matter in the beets in 1898 than in 1897. 
The difference in the percentage of dry matter attributable to the 
seasons was from 3.0 to 3.75 per cent., about one sixth of the total 
dry matter in the beets. 
The question of the rate of drying out was taken up again with 
more care than in previous years, with about the same results, i. e., 
that the loss for the first twenty-four hours was about five per cent. 
In this case, with a temperature of 57 to 66 degrees, the loss was 
4.39 per cent. It fell to two per cent, in a few days, and remained 
at this figure for twelve da} 7 s. The effect of drying out is shown in 
its effect on the average sugar percentage in 1898. In this year we 
analyzed 813 samples. The average percentage of sugar is found 
to be 15.12, without making any allowance for the drying out. 
We succeeded in obtaining fairly reliable data in 336 instances on 
which to base the deduction which should be made, and find it to 
be 1.5 per cent., which gives us an average of 13.62 per cent, for the 
crop. 
The conclusions arrived at, as the result of many experiments 
to determine the relation existing between the size of the beets and 
their sugar content, are : That beets to be compared must be grown 
under the same conditions; that the conditions determining the 
percentage of sugar are so complex that no given weight can be 
accepted as a limit which, if exceeded, will indicate that the beet is 
not of proper richness and quality for the manufacture of sugar; 
that when the large size is due to an excessive supply of plant 
food, or an unduly large feeding ground and a constant and very 
abundant water supply, the beet is quite certain to be low in sugar, 
but this will be true of all beets, large or small, grown under such 
conditions. 
Eight experiments, in which beets weighing less than one half 
a pound are compared with beets weighing more than two pounds, 
showed that the smaller beets were richer in seven instances and 
poorer in one. The maximum difference in favor of the smaller 
beets is one per cent., the least difference is 0.19 per cent. The aver¬ 
age difference is 0.50 per cent. The beets above one half pound in 
w T eight make the crop. The coefficient of purity is better in the 
